诗文
[TOC]
零碎短诗词句
相逢已是上上签，何须相思煮余年
春风若有怜花意，可否许我再少年
最是人间留不住，朱颜辞镜花辞树
诚知此恨人人有，贫贱夫妻百事哀
试问岭南应不好，却道，此心安处是吾乡
人生万事需自为，跬步江山即寥廓。
儒以文乱法，侠以武犯禁
我有所念人，隔在远远乡
我有所感事，结在深深肠
句
唯天下之至诚能胜天下之至伪，
唯天下之至拙能胜天下之至巧。
子
太上老君常清静经
老君曰：大道无形，生育天地；大道无情，运行日月；大道无名，长养万物；吾不知其名，强名曰道。夫道者：有清有浊，有动有静；天清地浊，天动地静；男清女浊，男动女静；降本流末，而生万物。清者，浊之源，动者，静之基；人能常清静，天地悉皆归。
夫人神好清，而心扰之；人心好静，而欲牵之。常能遣其欲，而心自静；澄其心，而神自清；自然六欲不生，三毒消灭。所以不能者，为心未澄，欲未遣也；能遣之者：内观其心，心无其心；外观其形，形无其形；远观其物，物无其物；三者既悟，唯见于空。观空亦空，空无所空；所空既无，无无亦无；无无既无，湛然常寂。寂无所寂，欲岂能生；欲既不生，即是真静。真常应物，真常得性；常应常静，常清静矣。如此清静，渐入真道；既入真道，名为得道；虽名得道，实无所得；为化众生，名为得道；能悟之者，可传圣道。
老君曰：上士无争，下士好争；上德不德，下德执德；执著之者，不名道德。众生所以不得真道者，为有妄心；既有妄心，即惊其神；既惊其神，即著万物；既著万物，即生贪求；既生贪求，即是烦恼；烦恼妄想，忧苦身心；便遭浊辱，流浪生死；常沉苦海，永失真道。真常之道，悟者自得；得悟道者，常清静矣！
仙人葛翁曰：吾得真道，曾诵此经万遍。此经是天人所习，不传下士。吾昔受之于东华帝君，东华帝君受之于金阙帝君，金阙帝君受之于西王母，西王母皆口口相传，不记文字。吾今于世，书而录之。上士悟之，升为天官；中士修之，南宫列仙；下士得之，在世长年。游行三界，升入金门。
左玄真人曰：学道之士，持诵此经者，即得十天善神，拥护其身。然后玉符保神，金液炼形。形神俱妙，与道合真。
正一真人曰：人家有此经，悟解之者，灾障不干，众圣护门。神升上界，朝拜高真。功满德就，相感帝君。诵持不退，身腾紫云。
诗
凤凰山【宋】王安石
欢乐欲与少年期，人生百年常苦迟。
白头富贵何所用，气力但为忧勤衰。
愿为五陵轻薄儿，生在贞观开元时。
斗鸡走犬过一生，天地安危两不知。
唐多令·芦叶满汀洲【宋】刘过
芦叶满汀洲，寒沙带浅流。二十年重过南楼。柳下系船犹未稳，能几日，又中秋。
黄鹤断矶头，故人今在否？旧江山浑是新愁。欲买桂花同载酒，终不似，少年游。
己亥杂诗·其二十八【清】龚自珍
不是逢人苦誉君，亦狂亦侠亦温文。
照人胆似秦时月，送我情如岭上云。
念奴娇·千门明月【宋】秦观
千门明月，天如水，正是人间佳节。开尽小梅春气透，花烛家家罗列。来往绮罗，喧阗箫鼓，达旦何曾歇。少年当此，风光真是殊绝。
遥想二十年前，此时此夜，共绾同心结。窗外冰轮依旧在，玉貌已成长别。旧着罗衣，不堪触目，洒泪都成血。细思往事，只添镜里华发。
江南春【唐】杜牧
千里莺啼绿映红，水村山郭酒旗风。
南朝四百八十寺，多少楼台烟雨中。
博客
Don’t Become a Scientist!
Jonathan I. Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.
[my last name]@wuphys.wustl.edu
Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the world works? Forget it!
Science is fun and exciting. The thrill of discovery is unique. If you are smart, ambitious and hard working you should major in science as an undergraduate. But that is as far as you should take it. After graduation, you will have to deal with the real world. That means that you should not even consider going to graduate school in science. Do something else instead: medical school, law school, computers or engineering, or something else which appeals to you.
Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from following a career path which was successful for me? Because times have changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed, probably when it is too late to choose another career.
American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs for them. When something, or someone, is a glut on the market, the price drops. In the case of Ph.D. scientists, the reduction in price takes the form of many years spent in ``holding pattern’’ postdoctoral jobs. Permanent jobs don’t pay much less than they used to, but instead of obtaining a real job two years after the Ph.D. (as was typical 25 years ago) most young scientists spend five, ten, or more years as postdocs. They have no prospect of permanent employment and often must obtain a new postdoctoral position and move every two years. For many more details consult the Young Scientists’ Network or read the account in the May, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly.
As examples, consider two of the leading candidates for a recent Assistant Professorship in my department. One was 37, ten years out of graduate school (he didn’t get the job). The leading candidate, whom everyone thinks is brilliant, was 35, seven years out of graduate school. Only then was he offered his first permanent job (that’s not tenure, just the possibility of it six years later, and a step off the treadmill of looking for a new job every two years). The latest example is a 39 year old candidate for another Assistant Professorship; he has published 35 papers. In contrast, a doctor typically enters private practice at 29, a lawyer at 25 and makes partner at 31, and a computer scientist with a Ph.D. has a very good job at 27 (computer science and engineering are the few fields in which industrial demand makes it sensible to get a Ph.D.). Anyone with the intelligence, ambition and willingness to work hard to succeed in science can also succeed in any of these other professions.
Typical postdoctoral salaries begin at $27,000 annually in the biological sciences and about $35,000 in the physical sciences (graduate student stipends are less than half these figures). Can you support a family on that income? It suffices for a young couple in a small apartment, though I know of one physicist whose wife left him because she was tired of repeatedly moving with little prospect of settling down. When you are in your thirties you will need more: a house in a good school district and all the other necessities of ordinary middle class life. Science is a profession, not a religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy.
Of course, you don’t go into science to get rich. So you choose not to go to medical or law school, even though a doctor or lawyer typically earns two to three times as much as a scientist (one lucky enough to have a good senior-level job). I made that choice too. I became a scientist in order to have the freedom to work on problems which interest me. But you probably won’t get that freedom. As a postdoc you will work on someone else’s ideas, and may be treated as a technician rather than as an independent collaborator. Eventually, you will probably be squeezed out of science entirely. You can get a fine job as a computer programmer, but why not do this at 22, rather than putting up with a decade of misery in the scientific job market first? The longer you spend in science the harder you will find it to leave, and the less attractive you will be to prospective employers in other fields.
Perhaps you are so talented that you can beat the postdoc trap; some university (there are hardly any industrial jobs in the physical sciences) will be so impressed with you that you will be hired into a tenure track position two years out of graduate school. Maybe. But the general cheapening of scientific labor means that even the most talented stay on the postdoctoral treadmill for a very long time; consider the job candidates described above. And many who appear to be very talented, with grades and recommendations to match, later find that the competition of research is more difficult, or at least different, and that they must struggle with the rest.
Suppose you do eventually obtain a permanent job, perhaps a tenured professorship. The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for grant support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your time writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your proposals are judged by your competitors you cannot follow your curiosity, but must spend your effort and talents on anticipating and deflecting criticism rather than on solving the important scientific problems. They’re not the same thing: you cannot put your past successes in a proposal, because they are finished work, and your new ideas, however original and clever, are still unproven. It is proverbial that original ideas are the kiss of death for a proposal; because they have not yet been proved to work (after all, that is what you are proposing to do) they can be, and will be, rated poorly. Having achieved the promised land, you find that it is not what you wanted after all.
What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone who does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another career. This will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations. Young Americans have generally woken up to the bad prospects and absence of a reasonable middle class career path in science and are deserting it. If you haven’t yet, then join them. Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospects at home are even worse. I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs.
If you are in a position of leadership in science then you should try to persuade the funding agencies to train fewer Ph.D.s. The glut of scientists is entirely the consequence of funding policies (almost all graduate education is paid for by federal grants). The funding agencies are bemoaning the scarcity of young people interested in science when they themselves caused this scarcity by destroying science as a career. They could reverse this situation by matching the number trained to the demand, but they refuse to do so, or even to discuss the problem seriously (for many years the NSF propagated a dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists, and most funding agencies still act as if this were true). The result is that the best young people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa.
Jonathan Katz
Thu May 13 12:39:11 CDT 1999
What I Have Lived For
《我为什么而活着》是英国哲学家伯特兰·罗素为《罗素自传》撰写的序言。
What I Have Lived For
我为什么而活着
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
伯特兰·阿瑟·威廉·罗素
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
对爱情的渴望，对知识的追求，对人类苦难不可遏制的同情，这三种纯洁但无比强烈的感情支配着我的一生。
These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
这三种感情就像飓风一样，在深深的苦海上，肆意地把我吹来吹去，吹到濒临绝望的边缘。
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy.
我寻求爱情，首先因为爱情给我带来狂喜，它如此强烈，以致于我经常愿意为了几小时的欢愉而牺牲生命中的其他一切。
I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness – that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.
我寻求爱情，其次是因为爱情解除孤寂——那是一颗震颤的心，在世界的边缘，俯瞰那冰冷死寂、深不可测的深渊。
I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.
我寻求爱情，最后是因为在爱情的结合中，我看到圣贤和诗人们所想象的仙境的神秘缩影。
This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.
这就是我所寻求的，虽然它对人生似乎过于美好，然而最终我还是得到了它。
With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
我以同样的热情寻求知识。
I have wished to understand the hearts of men.
我希望了解人的心灵。
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
我希望知道星星为什么闪闪发光。
And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux.
我试图理解毕达哥拉斯的思想威力，即数字支配着万物流转。
A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
这方面我获得一些成就，然而并不多。
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens.
爱情和知识，尽可能地把我引上云霄。
But always pity brought me back to earth.
但同情心总把我带回尘世。
Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.
痛苦的呼号的回声在我心中回荡。
Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
饥饿的儿童，被压迫者折磨的受害者，被儿女视为可厌负担的无助的老人，以及充满孤寂、贫穷和痛苦的整个世界，都是对人类应有生活的嘲讽。
I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
我渴望减轻这些不幸，但是我无能为力，而且我自己也深受其害。
This has been my life.
这就是我的一生。
I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
我觉得我活着值得，如果有机会的话，我还乐意再活一次。